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I will not discuss those numbers, but how can we know where new users come from? There must be a 1000 reasons. The point is: how long do they stay? More time than before?
Sorry for the off-topic.

They have to be staying, since we've set records for both total users and users online at once.

Ok, then. That's great!

no, the prices go down a little bit during the weeks after the playoff even if I remeber an u21 Israel sold for 9,1m, another u21 from Morocco if I remember well sold for 8,5m and so on, but now you pay 5m for "normal" players.
Then there are also other aspects to consider:

1) Top teams have an arena of 20k seats (all the top teams, you can check), with the cap arena it's a waste of money to invest it in arena
2) Specialists can't go out from the system huge money
3) Top teams are still having a profit at the end of the week, from 50 to 500k/week depending from the competition of the division were they are
4) It's clear to everyone that a player with 400k/week salary doesn't play on the parquet 2 times better than a player that earns 200k/week, it means that all the best managers have the possibility to be very competitive saving a lot of money (and this season like last season saving means earning)

If there is a profit and there aren't enough ways to invest the money this create inflaction with the "problem" that you've only one solution to spend your money and this solution is the market so I don't see how BBs can stop this if they don't change something.

About the new users BBs are not interested in people that open an account and then they stop to play after 1 week ;)

Last edited by ned at 12/29/2009 11:09:22 AM

Just decrease income in top leagues, the gap between lower leagues stop getting bigger.

this problem is a function of the development of the game -- the larger the game, the greater the competition, the slower the climb. believe me, i am very aware of the advantage -- or, more accurately, the difference in level of play -- older players have over me. larger arenas, more training time, and of course a better understanding of the game. i understand this to mean that progress is going to take time -- i figure i might be in a position to get out of div. iii in five, six seasons, that i might have only one player now that might be on my future div. ii team -- maybe. what really scares me is that if i get relegated, i am afraid div. iv would be much more competitive than when i breezed through a couple of seasons ago. i could see a day, maybe, when div. v could be the same. i think all this is a good thing --

As a new user in a USA division V league I do not at all feel like the economy is making it difficult for me to compete. I would say that the important thing for new users to recognize is that you don't need to have a bunch of 100k+ players off the TL to compete in division V, especially considering there are a fair number of inactives/bots in most div 5 leagues. I joined right at the end of season 10, after the playoffs but before the draft, and here is what I was given to start with (pretty sure this is accurate, but this is all from memory):

1) 300k team balance for being a new user.
2) 50k bonus per week for being a new user, for the first 4 weeks.
3) A team of ~20 players, 10 of which I would consider decently good for a Div V team.
4) About 10-15 'scoutings' in the draft. Not really great, but in a fairly inactive league this plus some luck allowed me to get two players who are okay now and whom I feel good about training as well.

I would say BB gives new users enough talent on the roster to begin with to win a fair number of games and make the playoffs just by actively managing your team. Bargain hunting on the TL for players in the 1-50k range can pretty easily fill in the few small holes in the roster that remain.

The money I got to start, plus the extra 50k per week in the beginning was enough for me to upgrade my arena a bit, bargain hunt on the TL for some bigs, and hire the staff I wanted. A week from now, once I have sold/fired a couple players and made some adjustments to my ticket prices, I am expecting to make ~40k/week profit, despite spending 20k/week on scouting and 30k/week on staff. And my team is competitive now, and improving with training as the season goes on. As a new player it's hard to know for sure, but I feel like I will be in a good position at the end of this season to contend for my league title and to at least survive next season if I manage to get promoted to Div IV.

Take this with a gain of salt because this is coming from someone with a lifetime total of only 3 league wins (in the lowest division possible), but I would say a couple key things new users should look to do:

1) Pare down your roster. You can pretty easily get by with a 15 man roster and BB probably gave you ~10-15 decent players for your division when they created your team; fire the bums who aren't good now and are not in your future plans. Seven bad players drawing 2-3k/week each can add up to 20k per week of lost money. You need that money! Clear your roster of waste.

2) Bargain hunt the TL. As a super general rule with plenty of exceptions, "bargain hunt the TL in div5" probably equals= ~4k salary or better with 'respectable' skills in the spots you want. You can find a ton of these guys for less than a 50k bid (often more like 1-20k). Just do a TL search for bids under 50k, and browse through all the auctions about to expire until you find a deal. And, keep in mind you probably only need to fill a couple spots this way; you team was 'born' with a number of decent players to begin with.

3) Find a couple young players at similar positions (bigs, guards) to train. This can be through the draft or by bargain hunting the TL. Keep in mind you don't need MVP potential; 'starter' potential caps out around 20k? That is more than enough to see you through division IV and V. This is a cheap way to keep your team improving as the season progresses: the 'decent' trainee that started the season can end up being a 'great' player (by div 5 standards) by the end of the season if you keep up with the training. A level 4 trainer is not unaffordable.

4) Maximize your revenue. Right now, before you have any trainees to sell for a profit, this probably means firing bad/extra players and expanding your arena. A reasonably cheap expansion of luxury boxes/courtside seats/lower lever can add 20k/home game in revenue, and if you're winning you can probably feel confident they won't go empty, even in division V.

Look on other hand, new users can train easily such aplayer in 3 seasons and if 2 players trained then income from player sales 20 million, If I would start this game again I would do in this way...train and sell, train and sell...

Thanks for the heads up but the starting question was not "how can a new player survive and/or improve its own team?". The question was "even by following these rules-of-the-thumb can a new player make it to the top two series in a reasonably large country?".

Ned says it's becoming more and more difficult, almost impossible.

I just relegated to IV serie after one year in a good III serie (in a very difficult side). I don't have a complaint about the economy in general, I do not have solid statistics about it (although I have a feeling that prices are stable now, stable but very high).

I surely can give an advice: do not try to achieve a promotion unless you are very confident to be able to stay in the higher serie. Relegation is a nightmare: half of your fans disappear (and probably it will take more than a couple of years to get them back), you don't have the chance to change ticket prices before starting the new season (unless it's the end of one month), merchandising drops even after two weeks of wins (even against your rival), and of course TV rights are reduced. Relegation is overly punished by the economics.

As you probably know, the BBs added a meganism to the game, that should regulate the amount of money involved in BB. As we can only guess if this amount increases or decreases, the BBs have the exact numbers. Via the new salary adjusments the amount of money in the game will stay the same, or will show a small decrease in the long run if needed. So I think raising the subject again isn't really needed, since the meganism is there already and this will fix the whole problem, if there really is a problem.

You, me and many other 'more senior' managers joined the game in a time where prices were lower, players were far worse and daytrading was an extremely effective strategy to get to the top as fast as possible and training wasn't. I trained my big men for like 4 seasons, but then when I wanted to sell some, the price of capped allstar centers suddenly dropped to ~3m when potential was introduced. Training was useless.

Now the price of such a center is back to 4m, while it was over 8-10m at that time (check the history's of players like this one (/player/2308283/history.aspx)). Would be awful if you wanted to sell your capped allstar center after 4 seasons of full training around may 2009, only getting 1,9m for such a great player.

While it is true that the starting teams probably can't improve their teams very fast via daytrading/the transferlist anymore right now, it is still possible (but a lot harder). They can, however, get a lot of value from training their players. Since all new teams stars with a few youngstars the need of being at the transferlist isn't huge. With lower prices it certainly is, and I think it's imbalanced again.

Also you talk about 'normal' players being sold for 5m now, but that's normal for you, for me, but not for starting teams. You can buy normal players for 100-200k for those teams.

The problem of inflation at the transferlist isn't a huge deal as well, and it only affects very few managers. Most of the managers sell and buy their players at about the same time. You sell you talents, buy new onces, you sell your top players and buy new top players. All in the same market conditions since the time between buying and selling isn't large. It might be a problem for managers saving money at the bank, when they sold their players in the 2m period instead of the 8m period, but that's a risk you take by saving.

Patje everything written is correct but I remember very well a post of Forrest or Charles last season when he written that "the inflaction is a problem, we believe that the prices will go down and we will introduce once again the FAs to try to get out money" more or less this was the sense of the post.
Ok, after 1 season the prices didn't go down (except for 1 or 2 weeks after PO) I can say that the prices are higher compare the prices of last season and if you check your economy you can easily imagine that the price will not drop soon cause we are still earning money (in some cases a lot of money) every week. My question is: what it was written last season is not valid anymore and we will continue in this way or from the BBs point of view there is something wrong on that mechanism and they will take some actions in a near future? I'd like to have an answer only to this question ;)

That we are making money, doesn't mean the total amount of money in the game is increasing.

Last edited by BB-Patrick at 12/30/2009 8:34:54 AM